


to sit beside after the day's pursuit

by alternatedoom



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angsty Schmoop, Artistic Liberties, Canon-Typical Violence, Erotic Dreams, Flashbacks, Friendship, Loving Landscape Descriptions, M/M, Original Character(s), Time Travel, Unresolved Romantic Tension, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 05:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6787093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatedoom/pseuds/alternatedoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wrathion heads to Draenor to meet Kairoz and Garrosh. Things go wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to sit beside after the day's pursuit

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This is a 'what happened next' mostly gen-type fic, made shippy.  
> 2\. Warnings for slaughter of an animal for meat, graphic description of a corpse, and a mental violation.  
> 3\. Thank you to GW for proofreading.

Anduin slumps and falls forward, the earnestness and desperation leaving his face as his eyes roll back. Wrathion catches him with his power, preventing a contrecoup against the floor. He'd knocked the prince out a bit harder than he'd meant to; Anduin's last-minute appearance had nearly taken him by surprise, and Anduin's accusing words had shocked him. He'd expected anger, certainly, perhaps alongside some disappointed observations concerning his moral character, but Anduin actually believed he would _kill_ him.

He comes forward to Anduin's side, finishes lowering him to the floor and kneels down, taking in the sight of Anduin's face, the familiar, treasured curves of his cheeks and chin.

_Oh Anduin, why would I kill you?_

"Ye of little faith," he murmurs aloud. Of course, Anduin has the most unshakable faith of anyone he's ever met... just not in him, evidently. The knowledge hurts, but probably not as much as Anduin's headache will. Wrathion deserves the slight, truly, deserves to be hurt, he knows this. _Betrayer._ But he's only done what Anduin suggested he do. Anduin will forgive him, someday. Forgiving is what Anduin does.

Carefully he eases Anduin onto his side, mindful of the wound to the back of his head. He places two fingers to the pale neck under the jawline and adjusts position a few times until he feels Anduin's pulse, steady as ever, almost defiantly strong beneath his fingertips. Wrathion leaves his fingers pressed there a few seconds longer than necessary. Anduin's chest rises and falls, just as though he's sleeping.

"Don't you do anything to him!" Chromie yells, voice faint from Garrosh's prison repository, and Wrathion narrows his eyes.

"He's fine!" he shouts back irritably. _If I was the villain you believe me to be, I'd be taking him with me._

Chromie owes him her life, even if she doesn't know it. Kairoz had wanted to simply execute her.

_"Chronormu is the main threat to the plan, a threat that must be neutralized. It's the only means of making sure she stays out of our way," Kairoz said, ostensibly focused on slowly rotating one of the metal dragons on the Vision of Time, but nevertheless Wrathion was aware of Kairoz watching him for his reaction._

_"Hardly," Wrathion answered confidently, startled by this viewpoint and taking pains not to show it. "There are other ways." He thought a moment. "Left or Right can shadow her. I'll knock her out and lock her in Garrosh's prison."_

_Kairoz considered, lightly tapping his graceful elven fingers against the curving glass of the Vision, and answered amiably. "As you prefer, then."_

Still cradling Anduin's limp neck in one hand, Wrathion takes a long final look, because Anduin is pleasurably easy on the eyes, and because while Wrathion's flawless memory contains a dedicated museum of Anduin Wrynn iconography, with several thousand immaculate moments to replay at will, there's nothing like the delicious friction of being with Anduin in the flesh. If all goes well he won't see the prince of Stormwind again for years. One last time, then, he commits Anduin to memory, adding the sight of him unconscious on a stone floor to his mental repertoire of Anduin Wrynn. Not his favorite Anduin mind-portrait, not by a long shot, but another for his collection. With his free hand he brushes a lock of hair off Anduin's forehead and behind his ear, and then he gently sets Anduin's head down. The Chu brothers glare at him, and Wrathion smirks faintly at them.

Part of him dearly wants to stay, but he rises, because it's time for him to go. He brushes past between Left and Right down the passageway. He'd set them to stand guard in the hallway when he saw Anduin coming because he'd wanted to speak to the prince privately. He hadn't realized the Chu brothers would wake so fast due to Anduin's well-intentioned meddling, or that Chromie would be an impotently yelling party to their parting conversation. Left and Right follow him as he winds down a stairwell.

On the first occasion Kairoz led Wrathion in secret down into the deepest underground reaches of Xuen's temple, Wrathion wasn't expecting an entire level of criss-crossing corridors of dungeons. However, once he gave the matter a few seconds thought, an extensive penitentiary made perfect sense. Xuen is the celestial personification of strength, and it falls to the strong to deal with the unpleasant realities of the world; strength occasionally requires secure places to stash defeated but recalcitrant enemies... assuming one doesn't prefer to kill them and be done. Most of the cells are ordinary box-like chambers closed in by a wall of traditional cylindrical bars, though a few are more complex, with large vault-like viewing chambers and iron walls with peculiarly shaped holes, similar to Garrosh's elaborate prison.

As they reach the bottom of the stairwell Wrathion flicks his fingers in a spell, throwing up several illusions, disguising himself and Left and Right as Pandaren monks in the beiges and browns of the temple attendants. Without pausing, as they walk he smothers each of the flaming braziers along the near wall with his mind. The disguises wouldn't pass in daylight, but in a dim hallway, from twenty-five feet away, none of the unruly spectators will notice anything amiss. Taran Zhu made good on his threat to imprison all onlookers who dared to disrupt Garrosh's trial, and Wrathion doesn't want to be seen just now. He refrains from extinguishing the lights in red lanterns hanging high within the cells, for plunging all those confined into midnight blackness would undoubtedly cause an outcry he doesn't want either.

Wrathion glances across the hall into the lockup. A great many faces look back at him, Horde races and Alliance races and Pandaren alike, all clearly separated by faction. Hundreds lost control of their tempers over the course of the trial.

He allows the flimsy illusions to drop off as the three of them leave the prison level, heading down yet another curving stairway and ending up in a hallway without any cells and without any lit lanterns or braziers. Left and Right are blind without night vision, so he wordlessly reaches out and clasps each of them by an upper arm. Guards' quarters are on this level, and although most of them are undoubtedly up watching Garrosh's denouement, Wrathion will not create a light; he's knocked enough guards, dragons, and princes unconscious today.

The corridor is empty, with no obstructions, and the stones that pave the floor are smooth. Still, guiding Left and Right forces Wrathion to shuffle rather than stride purposefully. 

Tonight, Kairoz too is far above them in the makeshift courtroom, standing at Garrosh's side for his sentencing and putting the finishing touches on the Vision of Time. Garrosh is turning his pre-sentencing statement into a long-winded soliliquy, successfully enraging the audience, not that that's difficult for him to do, and Wrathion half-listens, half-watches through the eyes of one of his Blacktalons.

An infinite dragon waits for Wrathion at the end of this long passageway. Wrathion releases his bodyguards as they turn a corner and faint candlelight is visible from beneath the door ahead. Wrathion assumes his usual place a few steps ahead of his agents as they approach the dim light source, and he pushes open the door.

An infinite dragon indeed awaits them, but it's not the individual Wrathion was expecting.

Three spare candles light the room, illuminating a dragon who's taken the form of a kaldorei with white hair, but the lavender of his night elf skin is overlaid with a steely sheen, and his eyes are a full, liquid black without even a pinprick of fire reflected from the candles. Overall his look is unhealthy, but then, that's hardly out of the ordinary for an infinite. He wears gray velvet robes accented with ornate bronze embroidery at the wrists, waist and throat. Wrathion's never met this infinite before.

"I didn't think you were going to make it," the infinite says by way of greeting. His voice echoes.

"An unanticipated goodbye happened," Wrathion says, halting. "Where is Venerus?"

"Venerus was killed a short time ago," the infinite tells him, not sounding particularly distressed, or pleased, or anything else. He's only met a handful, but Wrathion isn't sure he likes infinite drakes. They all seem sort of... slightly dark and flat and dead inside. "An accident. I am your back-up."

"Kairoz said nothing about this," Wrathion says, wary of this infinite stranger. He cuts the connection with his Blacktalon in the temple proper to better focus on this unexpected situation.

"An oversight, I suppose. Kairozdormu has many things on his mind," the infinite says, and when Wrathion says nothing, the infinite shrugs and goes back to waiting with his head tilted up, as if listening. Left and Right go to the small pile of knapsacks and satchels in a corner on the floor. The bags are prepacked, but Left must not trust this new dragon either, for she busies herself opening each bag and rifling through the contents, ensuring their supplies are still intact within. Finishing checking the bags that remain on the floor, she spins Right around to go aggressively through the backpack Right's already shrugged onto her shoulders. The infinite glances at the two of them but doesn't appear offended.

Left meets Wrathion's eyes and nods once. [ _Everything's here, your Majesty. Do you trust him?_ ]

Wrathion takes another long look at the infinite, not answering her.

Though the plan is solid, Wrathion is not overjoyed to be working with the infinite dragonflight. He feels a discomfiting parallel between the infinite dragons and his own corrupted flight. Infinite dragons are not murderous or insane, but neither do they seem exactly... well.

"The rift opens," the infinite says shortly. "Ready yourselves."

The infinite concentrates visibly, his thick purple eyebrows beetling together, his hands moving in expansive, rhythmic circles, curling his fingers as he gathers up the temporal energy Wrathion can see and sense but not manipulate. His movements are soothing, almost hypnotic, and the magic takes him a minute, yellow currents crackling in flux before them. Wrathion watches him in silence. He has no reason not to trust this dragon, despite his terse demeanor and unhealthy look. The infinites are decisively on their side, Kairoz has assured him. One must take one's allies where one finds them.

Wrathion has no reason to disbelieve the infinite's story. Still, quite a curiously timed accident.

With a focused exhalation that's almost a groan, the infinite swirls his hands one last time, and the yellow streams of chrono-magic coalesce into a churning, golden, man-sized sphere. This doorway into another time looks little like a normal, flat mage portal, with their smooth-flowing blue currents. The infinite dragon staggers back, and he emits a sound that from any other creature would sound like excitement. "It worked," he laughs in a creaky wheeze. "Brilliant."

Wrathion hesitates for a moment, because he's trusting this black-eyed infinite he's not met before to send them to the correct place and time, and that's asking a lot of trust. He would have preferred to go side by side with Garrosh and Kairoz, but logistically that was incompatible with what Kairoz wanted to do. Kairoz's intention was daring, no question, and Wrathion frankly admired his elan, to alter and correctly adjust the Vision of Time for its full use in plain sight of everyone in the temple.

The infinite's panting a little as he drops his now-gnarled hands, as if he'd been holding his air for the duration of the casting. In addition, he looks rather exhausted, as if the spell has drained him. Wrathion blinks at the dragon's withered elven hands, sure they'd been smooth and youthful when he and Left and Right entered the room.

"Well?" the infinite asks. "Do you no longer wish to go?"

Still Wrathion hesitates. Somehow he has a bad feeling about the change of plans. Perhaps it's only nervousness now that the moment has come.

The infinite seems simultaneously amused and annoyed at his failure to immediately step through. "It is nothing to me whether you stay or go, but the rift will not last, and I am only able to open this portal here and now using the residual temporal path from the Vision. If you do not go, I cannot reopen this timeway to you by myself. Choose now."

But Wrathion made his choice weeks ago, and he sealed his decision with a blow to the back of Prince Anduin's head only minutes earlier. _Anduin._ He can only hope his sudden unnerved feeling is not a premonition.

With a last look at the infinite, who never gave his name and is now eerily jiggling out his hands at the wrists, shaking the kaldorei skin smooth again, Wrathion steps into the singularity.

From the intense appearance of the infinite's portal, and from the stories Wrathion's heard from some of his champions about traveling through a rift to Deepholm in the wake of the Cataclysm, he's expecting to have a bad trip, perhaps some spinning, or the sensation of his organs inverting inside out, or at the minimum some nausea, but the world rushes around him for only an instant before reassembling itself into the natural order, leaving him momentarily disoriented and out of breath but otherwise feeling fine.

He finds himself on a drop-off with lush grasses around him on every side, and one of the most spectacular views he has ever seen, rivaling, perhaps exceeding Mason's Folly for sheer panoramic beauty. Prominent buttes, mesas, even plateaus tower to both the east and the west, all their flat tops green and grassy, all set against perfect light blue skies in every direction.

He hardly dares to hope, but-- it seems as though he's here.

Kairoz had said they'd arrive high on a land mass. He hadn't mentioned they'd be arriving so incredibly close to the edge of a fatal drop-off, but no matter.

Wrathion excitedly approaches the edge of the drop-off, which slopes down steeply enough to frighten an actual human. He transfigures into his true form and scoots to the very edge to look down. He sees gulches below, and rock formations of all kinds, visible in their glorious entirity from this vantage point. 

He senses Left and Right as they appear in the wilderness behind him, and he flies back a few feet to them. They seem more affected than he by the trip, and they're both panting for air, blinking and squinting hard. Wrathion realizes they're sun-blind from the transition to the bright sunlight after the darkness of the underground rooms in the temple.

"From the looks of things, this appears to be in order," he says, pleased so far but not quite ready to celebrate just yet. He glances around. There's only one direction that doesn't end in a vertical cliff face or certain death by plummeting for Left and Right, but he wants to make quite sure their choice of passage is correct. "Which way is south?"

Shading her eyes and squinting, Left attempts to take in the view while Right rummages in a pocket and pulls out the compass, then struggles to consult the quivering metal needles while her eyes continue to adjust.

_"Mortals can be useful for simple short-term tasks, but those two seem more like companions than servants," Kairoz remarked the time Wrathion sent both Left and Right out on errands. "Do you not find they hold you back?"_

_Wrathion scoffed. "Not at all. Their loyalty easily makes up for any inconvenience. They're indispensable."_

_Kairoz nodded but seemed unconvinced._

"Oh, let me look," Wrathion says, impatient, and Right extends the compass for him to peer at. Reading it in two glances, he points his snout in the obvious direction, straight down the slope opposite the spectacular view. 

"This way, let's go then," Wrathion says brightly, setting off through the air. The mountain is covered with a thick enough layer of dirt to be grassy, and there is a definite path. Left and Right hasten down the hill after him. They move reasonably quickly, but Wrathion's forced to pause and wait for them often nevertheless. 

"Come on, it's downhill," he urges.

He also has to fly back when he realizes he's flown off a small cliff and is hovering over a freshwater pond twenty feet below. Left and Right don't have the option. He flies back and finds the more obvious path he'd overlooked in his excitement. The plan has come together, they're here on Draenor, and they're almost down to the base of the hill. One more leg, and they'll reach the shady, grassy glade below. Wrathion glances back up to Left and Right, impatient but nevertheless enjoying the warmth of the sun. "You two need to grow wings."

"Unlikely," Left grunts.

"But we'll get right on it," Right adds.

"Compass check," he demands when they finally get down to him. Wrathion thinks he knows which way is northeast, if they've been heading more or less south, but he wants to check his bearings and be sure.

Right's apparently passed the compass to Left. Left glances down, then points into the heart of the forest glade, and Wrathion flies off confidently. Left and Right move a bit slower on the flatter ground, but the trees are not dense enough to impede their progress, and they still cover the miles quickly.

He notices one anomaly straightaway: the glade is curiously empty of birds and animals. Birds flew about the open mesa, but he'd expect to see and hear all sorts of small animals nesting here in the comfort of the trees. But... nothing. An unnatural quiet pervades the whole area, with only the wind whistling.

"Notice anything strange here?" he asks them.

"Well, there's the presence of us," Right begins.

Left glances around at the trees, answering affirmatively and more seriously. "Yes. It's too quiet."

Wrathion flaps around them. "My thought exactly."

The uncanny silence of a lush glade devoid of creatures could be consistent with a temporal disruption, the likes of which Kairoz and Garrosh would certainly have caused, and yet Wrathion doesn't feel any hint of Kairoz's presence. He keeps flying, and Left and Right keep walking. At first, he's pausing for compass checks every twenty minutes or so to confirm their direction, but when they find nothing and no one and Wrathion's sensing nothing that indicates Kairoz, he starts requesting them more frequently, every fifteen minutes apart, then every ten, and he starts to grow anxious and cross. Left passes the compass back to Right. They're traveling in a perfect northeast beeline; he's not sure what's amiss here.

This stage of the plan was not well fleshed out to Wrathion. But this part was so simple it didn't require much beyond the basics. _Venerus will portal you a distance away from our rendezvous point._ It was too risky, Kairoz had explained, for all of them to attempt to portal to the exact same location and/or time. Wrathion and his bodyguards were slated to arrive some days after Kairoz and Garrosh. _Head east across the mesa and south down the slope, all the way to the bottom of the hill. Then due northeast. You will sense my beacon._

But then Venerus wasn't there to portal them, and even searching thoroughly with his mind, stretching out all his senses, Wrathion perceives nothing that could be mistaken for a beacon. He picks up not even a glimmer of magic in this land. None whatsoever. So he keeps flying, and Left and Right keep walking.

The situation doesn't make any sense--unless something has gone wrong. And if something has gone wrong, it'll have gone terribly, disasterously wrong.

He can smell the salt of the ocean; if they don't find Kairoz and Garrosh soon, he will fly up and try to find the sea, and that knowledge will help him determine exactly where in Nagrand they are.

Wrathion flies and Left and Right walk. They travel for hours and pause for silent breaks. No sign.

The sun is low in the sky, perhaps two hours to sunset, and Wrathion is thinking about stopping to rest for the night, when suddenly the ground begins to slope dramatically downward.

"What the--" he breaks off as the ground becomes noticeably steep even to him up six feet in the air, and a thick mist comes up in their faces. "Hold here," he orders, and Left and Right halt. He flies down a bit further and sees through the heavy fog-- an ocean. They're approaching the edge of a sharply descending cliff, and below them is a shallow inlet and an ocean. Giant mushrooms loom out of the sea, and far to his right, difficult to see past the cliffs, is what appears to be the ruins of a draenic harbor.

They've walked all the way across the mesa. They've reached the ocean. They can go no further northeast--there's nowhere to go. Wrathion hovers in the air for a minute, distressed. 

So, somehow, they've missed Garrosh and Kairoz.

Wrathion ponders the possibilities. Kairoz and Garrosh could have accidentally portalled to a different timeway. He himself could be in the incorrect timeway. Yet the disruption in the glade, as evidenced by the complete lack of normal woodland creatures, suggests Kairoz and Garrosh have at least been here. 

So. Kairoz and Garrosh could have passed through this timeline without landing here. Kairoz and Garrosh could have had some sort of mishap with the Vision of Time and been killed or met with some other unfortunate end. Kairoz and Garrosh could have been forced to leave the rendezvous point before Wrathion arrived, by... something.

Or Kairoz could simply have given Wrathion bad directions.

He hisses his frustration.

_"I don't know why you want to join us so early on," Kairoz said thoughtfully, touching a finger to his sleek tuft of beard as they looked out over the balcony together. "It's going to be, well, boring I expect. Waiting on Garrosh will likely take years."_

_He'd given Kairoz a look that made the bronze dragon chuckle lightly. Kairoz knew full well how vitally important this was to him personally._

_"All right," Kairoz said after a moment. "As you wish. I'll enjoy the company." His smile was serene._

Has Kairoz deceived him, intentionally trying to strand him in some other timeway, or even some other world? But what purpose for Kairoz would that serve? A wave of anxiety passes over him, but he takes a breath and pushes the feeling away. He has to assume, for now, that he is in the correct location and timeway but that something has gone awry, not that Kairoz has deliberately betrayed him.

All in all, this step of the plan is looking like a bust.

Kairoz was, he must admit to himself, the mastermind mostly running this show. Wrathion has only been a partner because their interests so coincided. But every step of Kairoz's scheme proved so efficient and successful, Wrathion began to take him at his word. Began to trust him. Had his trust been misplaced?

He agonizes over his fears briefly before snorting out a little fire in frustration and flying back up the slope.

"We've reached the end of the mesa," he tells Left and Right, and admits, "I've sensed no beacon." He forces himself to sound calm. He remains in his true body to make this confession mostly because he doesn't want his human face to give away how worried and afraid he feels. Both his bodyguards' faces suggest they're equally capable of reading his draconic expression, however. He scowls. "Something is wrong here."

Left takes the news stoicly and silently, with only a nod. Right's lips twist, an empathetic look on her face. "What's the plan then, your Majesty?"

"A good question." Wrathion alights on a rock to think. "Give me a minute."

They have a simple but healthy assortment of supplies. The compass. Two tents, each large enough to sleep four. Canteens and wineskins for water. No extra clothing and no bedding, for Wrathion can easily fabricate such simple necessities as needed. Left and Right have gnomish army knives; Wrathion can fashion gorgeous weapons, but he hasn't attempted anything so intricate, miniaturized and complicated. They have only a small amount of actual food for the duration of time Wrathion expects to be here on Draenor. Between them, they're toting about two months worth of rations, three months if they eat little, longer if they maintain starvation rations.

And should the worst come to pass, they have the gnomish transporter device.

He'd assumed they'd meet up with Kairoz and Garrosh before setting up to stay, beginning to do the things necessary to live off the land during the long wait to come. Hunting, with him flying around to find game, will be simple enough. Talbuks roam the mesas and hills, he's seen large birds of prey, and his sharp eyes have discerned herds of clefthoof in the valleys below. Here is the sea, for him to catch fish and eels and sharks, and later he'll discover what sorts of creatures dwell in the freshwater ponds amidst the mesas. The Nagrand of Outland was famed for its cherries, so edible fruits must grow somewhere around here.

But he'd figured on doing all of it with his co-conspirator at his side. 

He decides what they will do, for the moment, is rest. The pleasant breeze from the north has turned into a gusting wind. Wrathion wonders how cold Nagrand get at night. The smoke from a campfire would make them visible to every creature for miles around. Wrathion doesn't want to build a fire; he will contrive extra blankets.

"We'll have to retrace our steps, possibly split up and look for them," Wrathion announces gloomily. "But not tonight. Let's go back up, we need to find a place to make camp."

Right glances up the slope. "There was a little pool and some good rock cover off to one side back there."

Wrathion nods, though he hadn't noticed anything of the sort, he'd been fixed on their path forward. "Lead the way."

* * * 

He's in a ballroom that night, the strains of the violin are sweet, and the people of Stormwind are milling around him, dancing and talking, but they fade into the background and he tunes them out when he sees Anduin across the room. The prince of Stormwind is dressed formally, in his white and blue and gold, silks and velvets and his crown, because of course he is, it's his ball, Wrathion knows this. Wrathion starts to walk to him, and time blinks forward and Anduin is there, within reach. Anduin slides into his personal space and accepts his hand, and Wrathion slips an arm around him as he's never held him in life, and then they're dancing.

"Some friend _you_ are," Anduin says, but he's smiling.

Wrathion tightens his arm around Anduin's waist, and for a precious few seconds he lowers his head, resting his cheek against Anduin's shoulder and breathing in the scent of him. "If my tiny, delicate bout of treachery toughens up your heart even a little bit, if you hesitate to trust even the minutest number of seconds, next time, I'll consider it a job well done."

"I wouldn't say I've changed at all," Anduin says lightly. "So sorry to disappoint."

"Oh, you rarely disappoint." Wrathion loosens his hold on Anduin and draws back to look him over. Anduin looks wonderful, glowing even. Still, he should at least ask after Anduin's well-being, it's polite, traditional. "How's your head?"

"You sound remarkably concerned for someone who gave me a grade two concussion."

Lifting his arm, Wrathion trails his fingers through the crisp, soft, short hair at the base of Anduin's neck. "On the contrary, I've always been concerned for you."

"My head is fine, no thanks to you. You do have the most astonishing ways of showing your feelings," Anduin says.

"I'm trying to save our world. Save your kingdom, save you," Wrathion says. "All I've done, I've done for Azeroth."

"So you said."

"You will forgive me, won't you? The alternative is unthinkable." Wrathion says it with artless carelessness and a winning, flirtatious smile, charm turned up as though he's certain of the answer, but the truth is he doesn't feel sure at all.

"I guess we'll see, won't we," Anduin tells him gravely, his face serious.

This answer is not the one he wants, and Wrathion aches a little, but Anduin did come over to dance with him, so he temporarily gives up and concentrates on simply enjoying the feel of Anduin in his firm embrace. He takes care not to hold Anduin too tightly or crush him. Anduin's an elegant dancer, someone at court has obviously given him lessons. Of course Wrathion is more graceful. Wrathion's never had all his bones broken. But that's Anduin Wrynn for you. Break him and he springs back up and keeps right on dancing, healing, arguing, trying naively to broker peace.

"I miss you," Wrathion admits, and he pulls Anduin in closely against him once more.

"So sentimental," Anduin teases.

"Only here, my dear prince."

"You are such a liar," Anduin responds, but he sounds fond rather than truly disapproving.

"What of it," Wrathion says, and lifts an arm to spin him.

* * *

Wrathion wakes up with a breath, still feeling Anduin's solidness under his hands and against his body, hearing the soft, longing music of the violin and Anduin's playful laughter in his ears. He's always had vivid dreams, but this one was unusually manifest even for him.

He flutters out of his tent and hovers in front of Right, who's sitting watch. "Stay here," he tells her, and takes off to find them breakfast. He doesn't want to go through their preserved food more quickly than they need to. He also wants an activity to clear his... head.

He dares not go too high; he's an exotic creature in this world not because his scales are black, but because he's a dragon. A young dragon, dead or alive, would likely be even more valuable here than at home. A precious preserved oddity above an orc's hearth, or a pet, or someone's steed, not that Wrathion would ever let such a mishap go that far. 

At close range or prepared for engagement he could put up one hell of a fight, but in the air he's uniquely and dangerously on display, and he could have a problem if something sees him before he sees it. Draenor might not have dragons, but predators of the land and air come in many forms and many sizes. Caught unprepared, a single Warsong orc armed with a bow and arrow could be deadly.

But he flaps high enough to take in the lay of the land from where they are. Wrathion doesn't know what sort of predator animals live on the buttes, and he dislikes the idea of being taken by surprise, so bringing one of his bodyguards on his hunt seems prudent. However, he wants to find the most direct route to food rather than lead one of his agents on a wild goose chase, expending energy clambering up and down the rock ridges on their slow bipedal feet.

He finds a path leading down the mesa on the other side, going southeast, suitable for Left or Right to traverse. Talbuk are grazing on the far side, and he contacts Right with his mind and finds her awake. [ _Come to me. Wake Left before you do._ ] He concentrates and shows her the path with his thoughts. He keeps the connection open a crack to aid her in finding him.

Wrathion's been content to eat human food produced, prepared, and plated for him for a long, long time. He hasn't sought to kill to feed himself in nearly a year and a half. Now he will hunt to feed both himself and others. As a black dragon, a pure black dragon, Wrathion has stewardship in his blood and bones, and such direct caretaking stirs oddly satisfying feelings in him. And on some level he's been looking forward to again experiencing the thrill of the chase, the orgiastic, erupting, finishing moment of the kill, and so he sits in the bough of a tree and watches the swaying grasses and the peaceful animals, full of precious life and delicious blood and flesh. He sees mostly talbuk and birds, but also a lone wolf on the hills and a herd of clefthoof kicking up dust on the plain far below.

But for this morning, talbuk is what's on the menu. 

He watches the herd for a good half hour, enjoying the sun on his back. The process of choosing a talbuk and stalking it brings back memories of Fahrad.

The pain that strikes at his heart when he thinks of Fahrad has dimmed with time, and the memories are pleasant ones--Fahrad's respectful lessons in surviving and strategy and killing, Fahrad's pride in him feeding his pleasure in his own success, his watertight sense of security with Fahrad at his back. He cycles through those memories as he selects his target, a younger, bolder talbuk than the others, straying a bit farther from the herd, healthy and a decent size.

He could simply rupture the talbuk's brain, or knock it out, but he instead takes it down in a somewhat more traditional way. In his true body, he approaches the talbuk from behind and almost silently, but at the last minute propels himself forward fast, bearing down on his prey with speed at the cost of perfect silence. He transforms back into his human body right before he lands on its back, gripping it and slashing once with a claw and then digging his nails into its soft throat, giving the struggling creature an instant passage from this life, swift and sure. When he's not much older he'll strike and kill while in his real flesh.

With both his hands transfigured fully into claws, Wrathion slides into a sitting position against the tree, pulls the talbuk into his lap, and begins the process of skinning it. He works slowly and methodically, as one knowledgeable and trained but out of practice, and he's finishing up with the fur exterior just as Right arrives. He's red to the elbow, and talbuk blood and gore saturate his clothes. 

"You're just in time," he tells Right as she crouches down at his side wordlessly, and he starts to deftly carve off thick cuts of meat, handing each to her in turn to carry back to the camp. 

"Lucky me," Right says dryly, rolling up her sleeves.

By the time he's through, they're both bloody to the elbow and all over their laps. Wrathion's lap is also covered in entrails, but he cleans himself by shapeshifting, letting the blood and guts and everything that's not him and his clothing fall to the earth at his feet.

They return to the camp, Wrathion flying slowly so she can keep up. Once back, Wrathion returns to his human body. He sits down on his flat rock and focuses for a few seconds, creating a handful of salt for seasoning and to preserve what they won't consume this morning. He accepts the stack of steaks back from Right and examines each of the portions of carved muscle before lightly salting and searing them with his breath, one by one. Considering the time that's elapsed, he did well.

Still, the matter of Kairoz and Garrosh weighs heavily on his mind, and he's in a poor humor by the time he's finishing.

"Rare, please, your Majesty," Right calls from the pool of water she's leaning into, trying to scrub the talbuk bloodstains off her hands and arms. Right thinks she's funny. Often she is. But Wrathion is in no mood right now.

"You should stay like that, you smell delicious," he tells her, and breathes fire on the last steak, still looking at her.

Right makes a face at him, then stands up, peering down at her stained and dripping skin, her expression turning entreating and playful as she stretches out her arms to him. "Give your second favorite human a hand here, your Majesty?" 

Wrathion gives her a look. "Approach," he commands, overly formal, and she comes to his side, sits on the rock next to his and holds her arms over his lap, her skin beaded with water. 

He concentrates and moves a hand slowly down one of her arms, removing the stains left by the talbuk blood.

But even as he focuses on her other arm, her teasing is still rattling around in his brain. "You know you're my very favorite _lady_ human," he tells her slyly.

Right smiles at him, hazel eyes alive and sparkling and pleased, and he knows at a glance it has little to do with her clean arms and much more to do with her contentment in pulling him out of a bad mood.

* * * 

He has a clear responsibility to feed his employees. He never promised to feed them well, but the meat from the talbuk turns out tender and tasty. 

After breakfast, they split up and set out to look for Kairoz and Garrosh. Wrathion heads south, Left goes west, and Right goes east.

Wrathion covers the most ground, probably because he can fly, but he's the first to return to their camp only a bit after the sun is midway through the sky. He wonders where they are. He could contact them, but instead he sits in the sun and thinks.

_"You're going to bring your bodyguards?" Kairoz sounded incredulous. "Two mortals? What will they do there?"_

_"The same thing we're going to do," he said bluntly. "Wait."_

Has Kairoz double crossed him? If not, where are they? Kairoz was so competent. Wrathion's thoughts wind in frustrated circles until Left comes back, when he looks up alertly. "Any sign?"

Left shakes her head. "I saw some ogres on the far side of the glade. They didn't see me. They were not normal ogres. They were... disturbed by time. Like the glade."

Wrathion frowns. "Disturbed by time." They must be from the temporal distortions caused by the Vision of Time. Wrathion's familiar with the phenomenon, at least in theory. Creatures becoming lost in time isn't unheard of but certainly bears investigating.

He unpacks some of their supplies, choosing a selection of dried fruits to eat alongside the talbuk steaks for lunch, when he hears a rattle from the box at the bottom of a pack. He pauses, then pulls out the rest of the food and opens the case containing his gnomish transporter device.

The contraption was carefully packed, but somehow it's been broken. The thin, rotating glass dish at the top is shattered, and a metal tube has broken off the main body of the machine. Wrathion stares at the debris of engineering pieces in horror, fear gripping at him. Without thinking he tries to press the tube back on, a pointless endeavor with the glass part swishing around in the bottom of the case in ten thousand slivers. Glass is silicone, he should be able to reassemble it, but this glass has been coated with a strange substance, one he's not sure about. He might still be able to repair it, if he could sort and lay out the mess in exactly the way it should be mended. An impossible task. Wrathion picks up a handful of the glass shards, letting them pour out through his fingers, clinking softly.

He meets Left's wide eyes over the box. "This is bad," he says, and his voice breaks on the last word. The gnomish device has an expanding circular platform and a counterpart calling unit back on Azeroth, in their timeline, an anchor to pull the machine and its one-to-four passengers back through time and space. The machine was designed and built by one of his champions, a half-nutty gnome named Hinkdus, and sold to him for an absolutely stunning sum and a number of enormous, internally flawless diamonds cut into many-sided shapes, all enthusiastically described to Wrathion and fashioned with his own magic.

With Hinkdus' guidance, Wrathion had tested the machine on local wildlife in Kun-Lai, first a monitor lizard, then a porcupine. Eventually he tested it on another of his champions for the comparably low price of several large bags of gold. The machine worked, but he'd only tried sending his forsaken champion a few years forward and back, not into a whole different timeway. Hinkdus assured him that it would work across timeways, and cautioned him more than once about using the thing too often, which seemed to mean often enough to attract attention from Dalaran or the bronze dragonflight. Wrathion hoped never to have to try using the device himself, but he was not about to time travel with Kairoz without a back-up plan to return to their own timeway should the plan go very wrong.

"Do you think it was the infinite who portalled us?" Left asks. "That broke it?"

"I don't know," he answers. He'd never mentioned the existence of the device to Kairoz. Of course, Kairoz could find out just about anything he wanted to. But why would he or any of the infinites have cared if Wrathion wanted the reassurance of an ace up his sleeve?

Wrathion rubs his lips, staying calmer than he feels. The glass piece was always thin and fragile looking, and it may have simply shattered on its own. "I think it just broke," he tells Left uncertainly.

Right's mind brushes against his, seeking, and he opens a mental connection to her. [ _Your Majesty, I found a clearing with a dead orc._ ]

Wrathion starts at that. Kairoz had said they'd be sufficiently far away from the Warsong not to encounter any scouts. By the Titans--could it be Garrosh? No, no, no. If Garrosh is dead, then-- all their plans--

Right goes on. [ _The death was violent, it looks as though--_ ]

He starts to cut her off, interrupt and ask if it's Garrosh, but a flood of impatience and fear overtakes him, and he rises and pins Right's mind with his to see what she sees, not even waiting for her second of mental consent before seizing control of her body and forcing her head sideways towards the orc's face. He focuses her eyes. He needs to know _now_. Right gasps but even using her body he hardly hears the sound. _Not Garrosh. A brown-skinned orc, but slight as orcs go, wearing white and gray robes of leather, facedown on the ground, lying on stone._

Wrathion draws a sharp breath and releases Right from his physical grip on her musculature, though he keeps their connection open. Right doesn't try to cut it. [ _Be right there,_ ] he tells her. 

Right's mind forms no coherent words for him, only feelings. She feels unpleasantly surprised, a little unhappy and a little dazed. Her eyes have unfocused again, the dead orc blurred around the edges now. 

Wrathion transforms to his true body in a flash. "With me," he says to Left, and flies off fast.

Right's felt the shock of desperation in his mind and the powerful undercurrents of his fear. He hadn't made any effort to conceal his emotions from her, and he can feel the echoes of his own desperation and dread reverberating through her and reflecting back at him even stronger, mixing with Right's own uncomfortable feelings. 

He's taken control of both of them before, but never without initiating with a mental nudge for permission. Left and Right have seen him at his worst, but familiarity breeding contempt as it does, there's no reason to add to the bottom of that 'at his worst' column.

Through the thread of their still-open connection Wrathion flies among the trees, heedless of Left's attempts to keep up behind him. He leaves her behind, pumping his wings hard, sweeping deep into the heart of the glade and then into the clearing where Right is kneeling.

The orc corpse crumpled facedown in front of Right is no orc. Wrathion senses the disparity the second he smells the rot. When he reaches the body, he transforms back to his human form and falls to his knees across from Right. 

"It's Kairoz," he says heavily. The decomposing stink is strong up close, a penetrating scent, but he hardly notices that, focused as he is on the sight of the orcish corpse. There's so much dried black blood, it's difficult to discern the injuries with any precision at first. He runs his hands over the leather robe and touches the dried blood all over the dragon's orc-shaped back, exploring the long slice in the leather robe, which begins centered right between the shoulder blades. The blood flakes off under his fingernails like specks of coal.

Wrathion wriggles a finger, then two into the wound between the shoulder blades. The flesh feels soft and cold. Beetles and flies disturbed by his probing wriggle and fly and crawl out around his fingers. Even with no small mammals and no birds in this glade, devouring insects have found their way to the slowly decaying body. Scavenger insects returning carrion to the soil, laying their eggs in dead flesh, entirely the domain of a child of earth such as himself. It's the circle of life, and he's far less troubled by the stench and the brush of the insects against his skin than he is about finding Kairoz this way. 

He trails investigative fingers up and along the slash. The mortal injury was a stab wound, most obviously, and at this close range, the weapon was almost certainly a dagger. The initial stab was squarely between the shoulder blades, but then the blade was dragged up towards one shoulder. Wrathion can't sink his fingers quite so deeply into the wound higher up; the dagger dug in more shallowly as it was wrenched upward and around, and Wrathion finds it goes all the way to the collarbone in front. _It must have taken tremendous strength._

Wrathion withdraws his fingers and kneels motionless next to the corpse for a moment, taking it all in. Then he rises into a crouch, puts his hands back on the softened body and rolls it over onto its back. 

Kairoz has been stabbed dead center in the hollow of his orcish neck, and though decomposition has pulled at the muscles of the face, Wrathion imagines he sees a frozen echo of rage and agony. Kairoz's eyes appear deflated. Wrathion hasn't seen much death with his own eyes, but it's by far the least peaceful fatality he's ever seen. Wrathion's eyes slip down to behold even more stab wounds in the chest. Kairoz was stabbed so many times, the cuts have blended together, partly caving in the orcish chest, leaving the area a blackened pulp. The exposed chest cavity pulsates with insects. 

Kairoz's body was lying atop the remains of a tiny stamped-out campfire. Wrathion can see the boot prints in the ash and soot.

"I apologize for not respecting your-- ah. You know," he says absently to Right, not taking his eyes off the lifeless body. He never apologizes, but right now... he's not himself, and he's there and yet he's a million miles away. His closest agents have entrusted him with a great deal of power over their minds, and they keep themselves receptive to him, always on call, and usually he treats their mental sovereignty respectfully. But he can't spare much attention for Right just now. His thoughts race and whirl. Kairoz is dead. Garrosh is gone. He glances quickly around the clearing-- the Vision of Time is nowhere in sight. 

What happened here? 

He has two questions, actually. What happened, and what now. 

What happened is that either Garrosh killed Kairoz, or something killed Kairoz and Garrosh ran. Or something killed Kairoz and took Garrosh away, possibly to kill him at a later point? 

But this death... no, this was no random chance. This was not some mighty predator that took them by surprise, nor was it a far-wandering Warsong scout who happened upon them, not with this vicious, bloody end. With all those repeated stab wounds grinding up the orcish ribcage, this was personal. An act of hate and rage from someone incredibly strong, dangerous, and carrying a grudge.

This mystery has only one possible answer: Garrosh did this. 

_"How will you manage Garrosh?" Wrathion asked. "Somehow I doubt the Pandaren hospitality will have made him any easier to control. He's dangerous, even to us."_

_Kairoz raised an eyebrow at him. "You don't think I can be persuasive?"_

_Wrathion made a fluttering gesture of dismissal. "I have every faith in you, but this is Garrosh Hellscream we're talking about."_

_Kairoz only shrugged. "He won't have an abundance of choice. But I'll take precautions." He smiled at Wrathion's continued expression of concern. "Put it this way: I'm not worried."_

Wrathion sighs. "Oh, Kairoz, you should have worried," he says aloud. 

"Garrosh did this," he tells Right.

"How do you know?" Right asks. She's pulled out a dagger and is fiddling with the hilt, turning it over in her hands. Wrathion thinks she does this for psychological reassurance. A nervous habit, one she's had all the time he's known her. 

"It's the only explanation. A stove-in chest done with a dagger? This took phenomenal strength and was done in rage." Wrathion reaches out to finger the wound again thoughtfully.

"Do you think he took the Vision of Time?" Right asks. 

Wrathion glances around the clearing one more time, as if the Vision might have materialized while he was looking elsewhere. "Yes. He must have." 

Heedless of the smears of rotting orcish blood and corpse-dew on his hands, Wrathion puts a claw in his mouth and bites down meditatively, thinking. The claw never touches his tongue, but after a second, even with his near-total level of distraction, he realizes what he's doing, because the revolting smell wafts even stronger in his nostrils, and he drops his hand. 

'What now' is actually, partially the easier question to answer. 

Barring disaster, surviving here will not be a problem. The lands of Nagrand are rich, and they have all they need to eke out an existance in this new world. 

What he can't do, with the gnomish transporter broken and the Vision of Time gone, is get them home. 

Transmutation is perhaps the most complicated school of magic, and one of if not the most useful. Mages skilled in transmutation can teleport themselves, open portals for friends, loved ones, employers, paying customers. Wrathion is an unmatched enchanter and a master of illusion. He can do some straightforward abjuration. He has an extraordinary control of fire and all sorts of fire spells; he can wreak devastation with liquid magma unlike anyone else alive. As a dragon he understands the principles of transmutation instinctively, changing his physical body with ease sometimes many times in the course of a day. But as any novice mage can tell, understanding the principles behind transmutation is quite different from being able to successfully execute all the corresponding spells. So portal magic... portal magic remains as yet beyond him. 

And few alive have the inherent raw power, mastery and control to rip open rifts to alternate timeways, even with the assistance of magical objects like the Vision. Wrathion's certain he could, if he set himself to learning. But he has not. Most mages take years of study to master portal magic. Wrathion has barely experimented with it. And he's in a primitive world now, with no other mages and no access to books for guidance, hardly ideal circumstances in which to learn. 

He grits his teeth.

He should have brought hearthstones. Wrathion has heard from a few of his champions that hearthstones brought them home from Outland. He isn't sure a hearthstone would work from both a world and a timeline away, but it'd have been worth a shot. The precious objects are rare, so rare many people believe them a myth, but he could have acquired a few easily enough, or paid someone powerful to create them. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._

There's no question Garrosh took the Vision with him. Wrathion will need it back to have even a prayer of getting them home now.

"We have to find him and get the Vision of Time from him," Wrathion says aloud.

Garrosh would have gone to the Warsong clan. On this world, there's nowhere else for him. 

Right's saying something to him, and he blinks, coming back, but not in time to catch any of her words except for 'your Majesty.'

Briefly he searches the body, loosening the front lacings of Kairoz's robe, slipping his hands inside and running them down the front of the orcish body, searching for anything, a sign, an object in a pocket, any clue to give him more information than he has. But Kairoz brought nothing, evidently, on his journey across space and time. Only skin sloughs off under Wrathion's fingers.

Wrathion rolls the corpse back onto its belly and pats down over the robe this time, along either side of the orcish spine and over the hips and thighs. Still nothing. 

Wrathion rises from his crouch and begins to pace around the exterior of the stone circle, taking in the whole ugly tableau from a few yards distance. Right looks at him, waiting, but doesn't disrupt his thoughts.

Though the gray stone circle seems out of place here in this glade, the stone is a different color and pattern than the stone flooring in Xuen's temple, so Kairoz and Garrosh didn't bring it with them. They must have picked this stone circle up from some other timeway, perhaps, threads of temporal magic crossing and twisting and knotting. Or perhaps it's organic to this place after all, a long-abandoned and forgotten circle of shamanistic worship. Maybe that's why Kairoz chose this spot. Wrathion hardly hears the sound of Left's soft bootsteps as she runs into the clearing, panting. She made amazing time following him, Wrathion thinks, another absent thread of a thought. 

"Kairoz owed someone on Draenor money," Right says to Left. 

Left takes in the scene. "Garrosh?"

"Ayup," Right confirms.

Wrathion says nothing, though he's impressed with the speed of Left's deduction. He paces a full circle around the scene before he stops. He's learned all he can here, at least for now, and he gazes one more time at the mucky, stinking mortal remains of Kairozdormu. Kairoz was not a friend. Difficult to manipulate, he could be an arrogant, smirky know-it-all, but he was a magnificent plotter and his ability to methodically accomplish his plans earned Wrathion's respect. He's lost a good partner in crime, here. 

He looks away, finally. "What was that you said a minute ago?" he asks Right. 

"I asked where you think Garrosh got a dagger," Right repeats.

"Kairoz was careless," he answers, and he feels a sudden stirring of the air around him. "What is--" he has time to say, before a bronze shadow is blistering him with a spectral breath of sand. Coughing and choking, he rolls sideways, bounces to his feet and darts backwards. 

"Your Maj--!" Left yells, and halfway through the second word the breath is audibly knocked out of her. He sees Left and Right knocked off their feet and stunned, one right after the other, by a spectral dragon's tail. 

The feeling of fury that slaps him like a physical force is alien, entirely not his. "It's his spirit," Wrathion shouts. "Back!" Left and Right obey instantly and unthinkingly as they recover from the hit, cloaking themselves in the shadows in the way rogues do, and dodging back as he connects with them mentally. [ _Run!_ ] But all their rogue skills and sneakiness may not shield them from the ghost-sight of a vengeful spirit, so he morphs into his true body and flies fast past the entity's face, getting its hostile attention. The spectral reptilian head whirls on him, but Wrathion is fast. [ _Go back to the camp._ ] 

In life, despite their disparate ages and sizes, Wrathion's one hundred percent confident he could have taken Kairoz in a fight. Easily, in fact. Possibly blindfolded, as he'd once fought his favorite champion. However, he knows little of fighting foes that are no longer flesh and blood but ghosts. And so he takes his own advice and hurtles through the glade in the direction leading away from their tiny camp. 

[ _Your Majesty, are you all right? Where are you?_ ] Left's mindvoice sounds worried. 

[ _I'm leading it astray. Just get back to the camp, and I'll meet you there,_ ] he instructs. 

But perhaps the ghost of Kairozdormu is tied to its corpse, for the shadowy bronze menace barely appears to follow him at all. Wrathion flies hurriedly nonetheless. He travels in a circle and rejoins Left and Right back at the camp twenty minutes later. He's winded and his wing muscles are tired from the sprinting flight. He transforms into his human guise and slumps on the flat rock he's claimed as a seat. "I don't think it's pursuing us," Wrathion says breathlessly, looking behind. 

"His spirit is restless," Left says, frowning, and Wrathion can tell she was rattled by the surprise attack, probably due to fear for his safety, for Left is not generally one to state the obvious. 

"Well... pretty nasty death there." Right stands, retrieves one of the waterskins from a pack, and brings it to him. "Should we do something about him?" Right addresses the question as much as to Left as him. 

Wrathion accepts the skin. "Thank you. No, Kairoz is beyond our aid," he says soberly. He pauses to take a long drink and also to see if Left is going to object for some reason that has to do with ancestors or the like. But Left is a pragmatic sort, and he knows she hadn't much liked Kairoz. "We need to concentrate on where we go from here. Garrosh took the Vision. We need to get it back. So... we need to find Garrosh." He stands up. "Pack up the tents, I don't want to spend another night up here."

Wrathion glances back into the glade, experiencing a fleeting moment of regret to leave Kairoz an unruly spirit. He's likely damning what was Kairoz to an eternity without peace; it's not like anyone's ever going to scale up to this mesa and stumble across the corpse. But Wrathion has too much to lose and nothing to gain from tangling with a ghost, and it's Kairoz's own fault for letting Garrosh lay hands on a weapon.

He sighs. 

An hour later, Wrathion's hovering six feet from his bodyguards' backs, making encouraging comments as Left and Right rappel down a short cliff face. "Only another twenty-five feet, and you're there." 

"Between your rope and Left's knots, I'm pretty sure I'm going to die," Right says. 

"My worst knots are superior to your best," Left answers, and gently kicks in the direction of Right's head, not actually connecting. 

"Once more for my beautiful ropes, Left," Wrathion says, but he's not really paying attention, focused as he is on picking the easiest route for his bodyguards to pick their way down the mesa. 

Through a combination of downward hikes and a few rappels, they head mostly southeast and establish a new camp for the night at the base of the mesa. 

* * * 

He and Anduin are sitting together at the table in his room at the Tavern, facing off over the Jihui board. 

"Good luck with Garrosh. Don't end up like Kairoz," Anduin says, not looking at him, only studying the layout of the Monks and Temples, the Mushan and Farms and Pagodas and Shrines. 

"I'm amazing, I won't need luck," Wrathion fibs. He needs luck. He needs all the luck there is. 

"Mmm-hmm," Anduin says, dubious. Dream Anduin sees through falsehoods with annoying accuracy. "You've really done it this time, you know." 

"I have?" 

"You have, Wrathion. It's going to be bad." Anduin won't take his eyes from Jihui. 

"You sound so ominous. How would you know? Are you a harbinger of doom? Are you my visions, is this how I get visions now?"

"Maybe I'm your guilty conscience," Anduin says, as grumpy as the time Wrathion dragged him from bed early with no breakfast for two hours. 

Wrathion laughs. "Not likely." 

"You're terrible at this game," Anduin tells him. "Just terrible." 

Wrathion looks down at the set-up of the pieces. They appear to be forty or so moves into the match, and the board is a mess. Clearly he hasn't been cooperating according to the game's stated objectives. 

"The premise is absurd," Wrathion argues, although in their later days of playing Jihui, he'd stopped trying to win alone and cooperated probably ninety percent of the time. And always he'd gone by the book when Anduin seemed to need the comfort of his collaboration. Kindness isn't Wrathion's natural inclination, but he can be kind. 

Anduin drums his fingers against the table like he's annoyed. "Then why do I play it with you, again?" 

"Because you love it, and even though it isn't my favorite, I enjoy playing with you." 

To prove his point, and to make a conciliatory effort, Wrathion nudges his Ox two spaces sideways towards Anduin's Crane, the most cooperative possible move he can make on the board as the pieces currently stand. He didn't start this game, he knows he's dreaming, but he and Anduin could still win, together. 

* * * 

They head first west, then south. It takes a couple days of wandering exploration before Wrathion sights a Warsong outrider from far above and shadows him back to an orcish settlement. They scout the edges of the place for over a week before Left overhears a conversation indicating the fortified place they've found is not the major Warsong settlement in Nagrand, but only an outpost. 

Finding Grommashar takes a couple more days. Leading Left and Right there takes several more. They spend longer still lying in wait to see if Garrosh ever shows his face outside the settlement. Many orcs come and go, gathering edibles and fishing and hunting and patrolling, but he never sees Garrosh's face, nor do Left and Right. Garrosh could be dead, he thinks. Or a prisoner. He has no way of knowing. 

From there, it's a quick realization that to confront Garrosh, he will have no choice but to enter the settlement himself. 

He leaves Right at their camp, because a human would be just as much a unique alien prize on Draenor as he would. Left's jungle green skin is outlandish enough here, though if all goes well she will never be seen. He doesn't want the added focus of putting and keeping up illusions on them. 

He transforms himself into the orcish guise he's been perfecting. He leaves his skin the same shade of brown but gives himself blue eyes. Anduin's bright blue shade, for the good luck he'll need. 

Wrathion has always been interested in people, and he's studied enough orcs to know how they stand and talk and move. Being in an orc body still feels slightly awkward, but Wrathion is sure no one will suspect him as being anything other than an orc who's not Warsong. 

He shouts a greeting from far off, to be on the safe side, and he's taken prisoner promptly. He'd only seen four orcs, but a dozen are suddenly racing towards him, pointing their weapons at him. 

"It's all right!" he says hastily, as much to himself as the orcs, and he puts up his hands. For most people, this gesture is considered to be a sign of peace and surrender. Wrathion does it for that reason and also because he can produce near-instant streams of liquid magma with his palms. 

An orc holds his spear much closer to Wrathion's thick orcish throat than Wrathion would like. Hands still in the air, Wrathion speaks slowly and calmly. "I come peaceably. I am Wrathion, a friend of Garrosh," he tells the orcs, because he doesn't know if Garrosh would have given his last name or not. For that matter, he doesn't know if Garrosh gave his real first name, and as he speaks, he readies himself to breathe an enormous amount of fire if the orc wielding the spear so much as twitches in his direction. "I am here to see him." 

But the Warsong guard obviously recognizes the name, and the orcs exchange glances. "Stay here," he's commanded roughly, and one of the orcs hustles off down the path. 

Wrathion waits no more than ten minutes before the orc who left to serve as messenger comes back. "Garrosh will speak with you," he says, and Wrathion breathes a sigh of relief. He's led down the path, and he senses Left creeping a ways behind him, shrouding herself in the shadows. She presses closer to sneak in the wide doors before they're closed behind Wrathion and the Warsong orcs. 

Wrathion enters a large hall to see walls lined with Iron Horde guards. Garrosh is no prisoner here; he sits alone at a circular table that could easily seat twelve in the dead center of the room, surrounded by smaller tables. Garrosh shows no sign of recognition, but his small golden eyes follow Wrathion as he approaches. 

The guards escort him all the way to the table. He doesn't dare look back. [ _Are you in?_ ]

[ _Yes, your Majesty._ ] 

"I will speak with this outsider alone," Garrosh announces, and the Warsong guards withdraw to either side of the hall, out of earshot unless the acoustics in the hall are friendlier to eavesdropping than Wrathion thinks. 

"Wrathion," Garrosh says. 

"Yes. I've been looking for you," Wrathion says calmly, as if he hasn't spent weeks foundering about Draenor. "You weren't at the rendezvous point." He keeps the accusation out of his voice. "How long have you been here?" 

"Months," Garrosh says, equally unconcerned. 

Wrathion makes a brief show of glancing around before looking back at Garrosh, watching him steadily as he asks, "Where is Kairoz?" 

"He's dead," Garrosh says, with a faint smile playing around his lips. 

The information is hardly a revelation, but it's exactly as he'd feared, and the bottom drops out of Wrathion's stomach, almost as if he's finding Kairoz's corpse for the first time again. It's true: Garrosh has murdered Kairoz. Wrathion knows this truth with no further information necessary. Garrosh's little smile speaks volumes. 

"What happened?" Wrathion asks slowly. 

Garrosh rises from his creaking chair, made from woven wood, and though he does not approach, the hairs stand up on the back of Wrathion's neck. "He tried to tell me what to do," Garrosh drawls. 

Wrathion's body feels rigid, but his self-preservation instincts kick in, and he keeps his movements nonchalant, tilting his head back slightly so he can continue to look Garrosh in the eye. He may need to grab Left and run, he thinks, and fight their way out. "I see," he says evenly. "Well. I shan't do the same." 

"No, you won't. I won't be your pawn or anyone else's," Garrosh says ominously, his voice alpha-deep. 

"I've never sought to use you," Wrathion lies quickly. It's a baldly obvious falsehood, and he adds more truthfully and convincingly, "Our plans were to mutual advantage." 

"My plans are my own, _whelp_ ," Garrosh says, emphasizing Wrathion's true nature, his voice cold. "I'm done with your kind. Now get out of here or I'll kill you like I did your little bronze friend." 

But Garrosh glances over Wrathion's shoulder for an instant, and Wrathion realizes suddenly-- Garrosh doesn't want to try to slay him, at least, not here and now. Garrosh doesn't want to make a scene. Wrathion could cause... complications for him, perhaps. 

"I didn't travel through time to a strange world to be threatened by you when I've done nothing thus far but help save your life," Wrathion says, sharp but quiet. "Now. Where is the Vision of Time?" 

Garrosh smiles broadly, as though he likes this query. "It's in Azeroth, in our time. It shattered all over the floor of the temple."

Wrathion gapes at Garrosh in mute horror. If the Vision of Time is lost to them, then... 

Garrosh chuckles at the look on his orcish face. "You didn't know that would happen?" 

"No," Wrathion says, too stunned and aghast to lie. "Did Kairoz?" 

"I don't know." Garrosh shrugs. "Probably. He thought he knew everything." 

"But-- how did Kairoz intend to find our timeway again without it?" 

Garrosh laughs at him again, not jeering this time but a hearty, belly-deep laugh like it's the best joke he's heard since he's been on Draenor. "So you came to another world and another time... not knowing how you would return?" 

Wrathion grinds his sharp teeth. "I was so delighted to be saving your life, it must have slipped my mind," he says, dripping ferociously with sarcasm. He struggles to put his whirling thoughts in order. "Traveling with a bronze dragon provides a certain sense of security," he begins, but then he laughs, because Garrosh has a point. Wrathion doesn't bother mentioning his secret time travel device, because it's meaningless. Why did he have only one back-up plan? Just like with the hearthstones that weren't, Wrathion's appalled at his own oversights. "What could go wrong?" 

"What indeed," Garrosh agrees, and then he says, "I did you a favor. You wouldn't have done well traveling with Kairoz. He was mad." 

Wrathion scowls at this remark. "You're lying. I would have known if he was insane." 

Garrosh shakes his head as if Wrathion's disappointed him. "Why would I lie? We both know what happened isn't keeping me up at night." Garrosh's expression turns thoughtful. "You should have heard him raving." 

"I'd rather travel with Kairoz than be permanently stuck here with you," Wrathion says. 

"There is a shard," Garrosh tells him, and his small amber eyes are cunning. 

"Where?" The question leaves his mouth in a fierce snap, even knowing with perfect certainty that Garrosh will never tell him. 

"Safe," Garrosh says, smiling cruelly, as though he knows this is a torment. "You won't be able to get to it, so don't get ideas." He gestures around the hall, as though Wrathion actually needs a reminder that he's surrounded by a legion of Warsong orcs. 

"What are you planning to do?" Wrathion demands. "Tell me your intentions." 

Garrosh considers, a smile playing around his lips, as though deciding whether to share. "I am rallying the clans, just as Kairoz wanted," Garrosh says. "And the orcs will be returning to Azeroth in our time. As conquerors, uncorrupted by the Burning Legion." 

Wrathion stares at him.

"We'll crush the false Horde of Azeroth and the Alliance too," Garrosh says almost lazily, and he lifts his arms, gesturing around them. 

Wrathion cringes inwardly and resists the urge to claw his own face, because more war on that scale is the absolute last thing he wants or hoped would result from their plan. 

"We have the numbers and now that I'm here, we have the weapons and know-how," Garrosh finishes, smiling faintly, smugly.

Wrathion keeps his face perfectly still as his mortification begin to fade and anger rises hot and savage in its place. He holds his temper in check and contains the crashing feeling inside, a scarcely manageable feat, but he must, because if he lets even a wisp of the storm out now, he will try to turn Garrosh into a charred hunk of carbon ready to disintegrate at a touch. And he can't, now. Wrathion could take on a small army, but it had required a small army to take Garrosh down. Here, in the heart of the Warsong clan, Wrathion's surrounded by a large army composed entirely of Hellscream loyalists, and Garrosh is a danger all his own.

Another carefully laid out plan, utterly failed. He's been thwarted first by Varian and now by Garrosh. Even furious, oh, he can appreciate that little irony. 

He takes a breath and starts to speak, but a sudden commotion happens off to one side of the room, and a brief hidden struggle ensues behind a primitive tapestry before two orcs emerge with a scowling Left held prisoner between them. Whatever Wrathion was about to say is forgotten. A murmur goes up when the Warsong see her, not for the presence of an intruder, Wrathion knows, but for the green color of her skin. Why, oh why hadn't he put on an illusion to muddy her skin tone? 

"A spy," Garrosh says, not moving a muscle, the only orc in the hall not shocked by Left's visage. Garrosh motions the Warsong to bring Left forward, and the two approach with her gripped tightly but gingerly between them, as if they think she might be diseased. "Interesting." At the disturbance, a dozen other Warsong from along the walls approach. 

"She is my agent," Wrathion raps out. "Release her immediately." One of the guards lifts a spear to hold in front of his throat, and Wrathion's reflexes are faster than any orc's, but it's still irksome. 

Garrosh raises an eyebrow. "Oh? How many more agents have you smuggled in here?" 

"None. I said, _release my agent_ ," Wrathion says through gritted teeth, and he grabs the end of the spear being held near his neck and wrenches it downwards before letting it go, just to make a point. " _Right now._ " 

The orc whose spear he grabbed growls and yanks the weapon back up. 

"Agents come in openly. Sneaking in like this, she's a spy," Garrosh observes, and he reaches out to trail a finger down Left's cheek, successfully getting under Wrathion's skin. Left refuses to look at Garrosh or the Warsong orcs, keeping her eyes averted sideways and down, and Garrosh suddenly grabs the lower half of her face in one of his massive hands, forcing her to look at him. She glares at Garrosh, and her mind touches Wrathion's. [ _Sorry, your Majesty._ ] 

"You put so much as a scratch on her, and you won't live long enough to go home," he snarls at Garrosh. [ _No worries. Nothing was going to be accomplished here, anyway._ ] 

Garrosh lets go of Left's face and grabs her by her topknot ponytail, jerking her head back and exposing her neck. Garrosh signals one of the Warsong, who obligingly rests the blade of an axe against Left's throat. 

"Oh? What are you going to do?" Garrosh says tauntingly. 

Adrenaline races through Wrathion's veins, but he remains calm. 

"If you release her, we'll leave." Wrathion feels his lips curl. "If you hurt her, I'll make the back of your head explode, and your new friends are going to be washing your brains off their armor." 

Wrathion says it with sufficient intensity to make Garrosh hesitate, just for a moment. Wrathion glances at the other Warsong contemptuously. "The ones who live, at any rate. Not one of them, and not even all of them, can kill me fast enough to stop me killing you. And I'll fell a number of them for good measure." He lets his eyes pinprick red within the black pupil, then grows the pinpoint until his eyes flash their true, intense red, and his flat orcish eyeteeth lengthen to their natural draconic razor shape. A few of the orcs gasp.

"Monster," an orc breathes, and then there's a throwing axe flying at him, followed soon by a second. Wrathion's ready, and he knocks the first aside with one claw and breaks the other with a surge of power, shattering the iron blade into a dozen pieces that go scattering. The Warsong are sufficiently impressed that no one else immediately tries anything, and Garrosh lets go of Left's ponytail and briefly puts up a hand for the guards to cease attacks. 

Wrathion refocuses his gaze on Garrosh, sword-sharp. "They don't know what I am, but you do. You may have caught Kairoz by surprise, but I'm not Kairoz. I have powers he could only long for." 

A shadow of doubt crosses Garrosh's face. 

"Oh, you think I'm bluffing?" Wrathion leans forward, enunciating each word in the bass orcish voice. "Before I left, I knocked out our mutual friend Anduin Wrynn instantaneously and from twelve feet away." The true distance was more like eight feet, but twelve sounds better. "A grade two concussion. And I _like_ Anduin." He almost spits the words. "You can ask him about it when you go back to Azeroth." He sizes Garrosh up with icy eyes. "Walk away, and I'll do the same." 

Garrosh purses his lips, evidently thinking, and rubs his shaded tattooed chin. Then he gestures with his chin at the Warsong orcs holding Left by her arms. One orc simply lets her go, but the other shoves her forward. Left stumbles off-balance but catches herself, and rubbing her upper arms briefly, she comes to stand at Wrathion's side. Wrathion relaxes fractionally. 

[ _You're not going to kill him, your Majesty?_ ] 

Wrathion feels his mouth set in a grim line, and he knows his mindvoice sounds despairing as he answers her. [ _No. He's our way home, now. We still need him._ ] 

"I will allow you to go, and I will consider any debt I had to you paid," Garrosh says finally, raising his eyebrows, heavy with meaning. His look is serious, calm rather than angry. "But make no mistake. I don't fear you, Wrathion, and if I see you again on Draenor, I will kill you." 

Wrathion turns his eyes soft, bright blue again and shifts his fangs back to normal orcish eyeteeth. "Not if I see you first," he hisses in his own voice. Yes, it's a well-worn child's taunt, but he makes every word a threat, and he murmurs a word of warding to invisibly shield their backs as he and Left walk away. 

But true to his word, Garrosh lets them go. Wrathion hears behind them several of the orcs beginning to argue they should not let monsters roam the land free, they should willingly die a glorious death in battle with the creatures if need be, they should at least hold the strangers until Warchief Hellscream returns to pass judgement, and more of the like. Garrosh shuts the dissents down with a few authoritative words, shades of his own days as Warchief. And then Wrathion and Left pass out of earshot. No one hinders them. 

* * * 

Wrathion's silent on the trip back to the camp. He's always set the tone of his interactions with his bodyguards, and so Left offers him the gift of silence in return. Without thinking much about it, he flies slowly so Left can keep up. 

Horror and fury and anguish surge and ebb and flow within him. The shredded remains of Kairoz's plan are a disaster. They've--he's--made things worse. So much worse. 

He flies until they reach the camp, a safe vicinity away from the Warsong and a place he could release his rage, but he finds his will to scream and smash and breathe fifteen foot cones of fire has passed somehow, and he only feels bone-weary. The sun is only partway down through the afternoon sky, but he's tired, so tired. Right stands up as they return, looking at them expectantly with raised brow, but Left shakes her head. 

Despondently, without a word to either of his bodyguards, Wrathion flies into his tent to sleep. 

* * * 

They're alone in the springs. Wearing a tiny pair of plain white bathing shorts, Anduin sits on one of the wooden planks suspended over the water, dangling his legs to the knee. "I wish you'd listened to me," he says, but the statement sounds wistful, not accusing. 

"I don't want to talk about it," Wrathion says flatly. 

"Garrosh is..." Anduin shakes his head. 

"I said I don't want to talk about it," Wrathion says, more coldly now. 

"Okay," Anduin agrees. "Can I say one more thing?" 

"Fine." 

Anduin looks at him earnestly. "All isn't lost, Wrathion. There's still hope." 

"You would say that," Wrathion grumbles, but he's surprisingly comforted to hear the words spoken in Anduin's warm, confident voice. Likely it's not as deep as it will be someday, but Anduin has a wonderful, reassuring voice, a desirable quality in a priest, or in a king for that matter. Strong and serene at once. 

They sit in silence for a minute, Anduin swinging his legs in the water a little. 

"You always get in so slowly," Wrathion chides, leaning back in the water. A nonsense observation, utter claptrap really, for when he's not agonized with worry and stress, he thoroughly enjoys watching. Secretly, or perhaps wholly openly, he likes seeing Anduin put himself on display, likes that Anduin isn't self-conscious about his slight build, the pale skin some would call pasty, and the many ragged, twisting scars he came by so honestly. In truth, Wrathion suspects Anduin only feigns his self-assurance, but if so he fakes it well. 

Anduin lifts a calf, splays his toes and taps the flat of his foot against the surface, splashing Wrathion a little. "Not everyone can just leap into water this hot, you know." But Anduin takes the plunge then, scooting forward and pushing himself off the plank bench, slipping into the water to his narrow waist. "Besides, you have nothing but time." 

Wrathion scowls. "On the contrary, I am more pressed for time than ever before." 

"Trust me." Anduin contradicts him with an easy smile. "You have a bit of a wait coming up." 

Wrathion sits back again and crosses his arms over his chest, gearing up for an argument. But he uncrosses them almost at once, because it's not worth bickering about; he doesn't want to waste this dream arguing, or turn Anduin distant like last time. So he changes the subject. 

"Give me your shorts," Wrathion says. 

" _What?_ " 

"I don't have anything tangible to remember you by," Wrathion laments. "I should have taken something." 

"You are the most ridiculous person," Anduin says. 

"They say love makes fools of us all." Wrathion lazily stirs the currents of the steaming water with his claws, but he never takes his eyes off Anduin. 

"I don't have anything you could have taken. I'm not sentimental like you, collecting broken old pieces of relics," Anduin teases. 

"You have something I could have taken," Wrathion says, smirking a little. "If I wanted to." 

He hadn't done it, though. Hadn't crossed that threshold. He'd thought about it, but Wrathion hadn't wanted to break Anduin's heart quite that badly. A friend's betrayal is one thing, a lover's entirely another. Wrathion's read enough fiction to know the hero fights for the princess, or saves her, and marries her afterwards. The hero refrains from taking the princess' virginity before ditching her for something vastly more important than the pleasure of her company. Anduin may be a prince instead of a princess, and Wrathion may not be the most traditional storybook hero, but the same delayed gratification principle applies. What Wrathion wants, even what he wants from Anduin, is by necessity a matter on hold. He has to save Anduin first. He has to save everyone. 

Anduin pauses. "That's not something tangible." 

"You're quite right," Wrathion says, straightening his expression into solemn lines. "I should have brought _you_ with me. This place would be much more interesting if you were here." 

"No it wouldn't, because that would be kidnapping, and I'd have been mad enough to kill you in your sleep." 

"Well, that would stop me worrying about never seeing you again," Wrathion says, sighing. 

"You can't have my shorts, I'm using them, and it's too late for something tangible," Anduin says reasonably, but his expression turns sly. "But here, I'll give you something better," he adds, and he slides towards Wrathion then, cutting smoothly through the springs like a creature made for the water, and his bathing shorts are a flow of white in his hand, drifting away like a flag of surrender. 

* * * 

When he wakes up, Wrathion feels refreshed and calm. He still has much to be dismayed about, but he feels rested and ready to face this new mess of circumstances. He exits the tent to see Left and Right naked and washing themselves in the rocky pool, talking quietly about something, but they look up when he emerges. 

He wouldn't rush them through their bath, but he realizes they're both probably anxious to hear what he has to say. He sits on the ground in the lotus position and gazes at the dirt and rocks and grass of this other world while they dry off and dress. When they approach, he gestures them to sit down with him. They follow the silent instruction, Left crossing her legs before her, Right kneeling, and then they're sitting one to each side of him, waiting. 

Wrathion looks at each of them for a moment. They're fragile and mortal, orc and human, yet solid and competent and tough as nails, crossbows strapped to their backs as vital as any article of clothing. Most of all, they are as familiar and inalienable as his own two hands. Right's auburn hair is still dripping wet, her hazel eyes worried, her knife present and moving in her hand. Left's large, steady blue eyes are full of concern too; he can read her easily though she's rather less evincive than Right. He's used to seeing the two of them scowl all day behind him, but their faces are softened now, probably because there's no one around to intimidate on his behalf. He takes them for granted, but he's more grateful to have them than ever. He hadn't insulted their loyalty by asking if they actually wanted to follow him into another world and timeway.

_You could have done with some mortal companions of your own, Kairoz. You might still be alive._

"Alright," Wrathion tells them, meeting their eyes in turn. "It's time for a new plan." 

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Virginia Woolf: "I want someone to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, and its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy - to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits."
> 
> Edited August 2016 because I have been spelling Jihui wrong. D'oh!


End file.
